• Category Archives Jefferson County

  • Fire

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                  Closing Moon

    Fire mitigation is on my mind. Firewise is a project of the National Fire Protection Association and has wide exposure here in Colorado. They recommend defensible space, 30 feet out from the house no trees, shrubs, fuel. Trees out to 50 feet or so limbed up to 10 feet so fire can’t skip from ladder fuels (shrubs, grass) to tree branches. That’s considered only good sense up here on Shadow Mountain.

    And, to show you that no good deed goes unpunished, the very wet, fire repressing May and June (thunder outside right now) we’re having, will nourish grass and shrubs. They’ll make excellent ladder fuels in the dry time of late June and July. Geez.

    Our property’s not in bad shape in terms of defensible space. The previous owner seems to have done much of what’s suggested. To make sure though I’m having the deputy chief of the Elk Creek Fire District come out next Thursday to do a fire mitigation assessment.

    Still working on the idea of an external fire sprinkler system. I’ve read many websites, pdf’s. Lots of options, including a few that don’t use water, but spray fire retardant chemicals. Managed to confuse myself, so I e-mailed the state coordinator for wildfire mitigation and asked her to comment on their utility. Lots of wind apparently renders them near to useless and high winds accompany most mountain fires.

    Also, they need enough water for 3 hours of continuous sprinkling, 2 hours before the fire to create a moist micro-climate and one hour afterward to protect against embers blown back. That’s likely a good bit more than our well can handle which would require an in-ground water tank.

    A new place, new challenges. All part of becoming native to this place.


    Jefferson County Our Land and Home Shadow Mountain The West Weather +Climate

  • Golden

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                        Closing Moon

    To the Colorado Geology Museum on the Colorado School of Mines’ campus. Introducing Mary to the geological and mining heritage of our new home. Struck up a conversation with the clerk in the gift shop, always a School of Mines’ student. She was a geological engineer and headed for work in a petroleum or mining related job.

    “Both are cyclical,” she said, in response to my question, “But both are at the bottom of their cycles right now.” She has no job and her geological engineer spouse does. “But,” she said a tad ruefully (they both graduated last month), “teaching middle school science.” In St. Louis.

    I’ve not yet raised the question about environmental effects with any of these students , still feeling my way into the local culture. But, I intend to.

    After the Geology Museum we went into downtown Golden. It has this odd theme: Denver stole the title of capital from us and we’ve been working ever since to bring you things worth seeing. Snarky, a self-put down and, to me, unpleasant.

    We had some yogurt. Kate and Mary went to the quilt museum which apparently had a wonderful exhibit while I wandered the main street poking my head into shops. None of them really grabbed. The art galleries were full of yesterday’s ideas and tomorrow’s kitsch. The gift shops had the usual assortment of inexpensive gemstones, bottle cap openers with your name on the handle, hats and t-shirts and sweatshirts with Golden somewhere written on them. I did see one piece I liked. A pillow with a hand sewn Colorado flag featured an elk in the lotus position. Sounds cheesy, but the execution was good.

    Eventually I sat down in the shade.  Just another 68 year old guy waiting for his wife to come to the quilt shop.

     


    Art and Culture Colorado Jefferson County The West Travel

  • Visiting

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                  Closing Moon

    Mary always brings gifts, this time beautiful cloth for Kate from Indonesia and items of anthropological interest for me, including a small book of odd superstitions common in Singapore. In another post I’ll share some of them with  you.

    Visiting family and friends requires real commitment on her part since it’s about 9100 miles from Singapore to Denver. That’s roughly ten times the Minneapolis/Denver distance. How she endures all that international flying, I don’t know. I find it exhausting and maddening, one in direct relation to the other.

    Last night we all three went to the Fort, the restaurant I wrote about before that was built to imitate Bent’s Fort, an 1830’s trading company’s place of business in what is now southern Colorado. They serve what would have been available on the menu at Bent’s Fort: bison, elk, quail, lamb, beef though I notice Shrimp Veracruz and Quinoa, which Mary had last night, have been added.

    The Fort is all adobe construction with thick tree trunks as support beams and pillars. It overlooks, from high among the red rocks of the Fountain Formation in Morrison, the twinkling lights of Denver about 20 miles in the distance. The staff dresses somewhat like voyageur’s, appropriate since Bent’s Fort did business with French trappers and traders who worked closely with native peoples here as they did in the far north.

     


    Colorado Family Jefferson County The West

  • Closing Moon

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                      Closing Moon

    The closing moon has presided over the sale of 3122 153rd Ave. Northwest, Andover, Minnesota, 55304. We only needed one buyer and, in fact, had only one offer. But, it was a good one, from a couple that will continue our work with the land and with bees. That they want the raised beds, the orchards, the hydroponics, the bee woodenware and will use them all feels like a legacy. And a profound one.

    Feels so good to have this behind us. A settled feeling, residing somewhere below the heart, has begun to permeate me. There is no longer that agitated sense that we do not quite belong on Shadow Mountain, that a tie from yesterday makes us not fully present in our new home.

    Over the weekend I entertained, briefly, what would happen if the deal with the Vorhee’s fell through. The house would have to go back on the market. We’d continue with two mortgages and utilities. The uncertainty would continue, perhaps through the summer. And, we would have to drop the price again. That felt dismal, like sinking in the great swamp of that name.

    Now I can concentrate on dealing with prostate cancer with a single focus, not one divided by financial concerns. I’m confident that the prostate cancer journey will have a good outcome, too, but the path forward still has some unknowns, mostly what sort of treatment we’ll choose. That unknown should disappear on June 11th, after then only the execution and recovery.

     

     


    Anoka County Family Feelings Jefferson County Shadow Mountain The Move

  • For Millions of Years

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                      Closing MoonUpper Maxwell Falls Trail350

     

    A mile or so from our driveway is the trailhead for Upper Maxwell Falls trail. I went once in the winter and didn’t take my yak-traks with me. It was too icy to navigate the altitude gain.

    Today, as the gloom began to settle in late afternoon, and as my own mood began to mimic the gray overhead, I set out for Maxwell Falls.

    Upper Maxwell Falls Trail1350The trail is not long, about a mile and a third round trip, but it does climb, then decline through ponderosa forest. Piles of large boulders, weathered and jumbled together, cling to the side of Shadow Mountain above and the trail, while Maxwell Creek flows with equal parts power and grace, going white over rocks in its way, curling around them, too, in gentle embrace.

    The falls themselves are modest in height, but there are several, one after another, giving more speed to the already rapid water. This is the way it’s been here for millions of years after the snow melt and when rains come. The water starts up high and finds these channels that allow it to collect and be the chisel. Later, it will grow calm after having taken a fast ride, perhaps pooling behind a beaver dam or a spillway or flowing into a lake or pond.Upper Maxwell Falls1350

    It is a privilege to live so close to this magic. It dispelled the gathering gloom in my Self, allowed me entrance to the Otherworld, the place where humans are still one among many and not more important than any other.


    Faith and Spirituality Great Wheel Great Work Jefferson County Mountains Shadow Mountain Weather +Climate

  • Tractor Beam Energy of the High Plains

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                   Beltane Moon

    May snow 600Snow began coming down in parallel streaks about 2 p.m. yesterday. It built up quickly, then slacked off. Overnight more snow fell. This is snow with a 3/1-7/1 water ratio so it’s wet, heavy. I estimate 4-6 inches which, with a different water ratio, would have been 12-18 inches.

    10 days after Beltane, the beginning of summer in Celtic lands, we have snow laden ponderosa boughs, a driveway covered in a thick blanket, roofs and yard all white.

    This brings us to flooding. According to weather5280, the front range has absorbed all the water it can. The rest now gallops downhill like a herd of wild mustangs. Up where we are the mountain streams are thick with fast moving water. It has spread beyond stream banks and minor flooding has occurred. But we’re the feeder system, our streams smaller, more shallow. It’s when Cub Creek hits Maxwell Creek and the two become one heading for Evergreen that the real danger happens.

    Down mountain the streams collect the Cub Creeks, the Maxwell Creeks, the Shadow Brooks to create fast moving, not to be restrained small rivers. A couple of years ago this created serious flooding in Boulder, Golden, Manitou Springs, Denver all distinguished by their positions along the beginning of the high plains.

    (This one from May 9th.)

    All the water from the Eastern Slopes, by virtue of gravity’s strong pull, has a passionate desire to get lower, reduce the tractor beam energy created by lower altitudes. And it will see its desire met. No matter what lies in its way.

    This is nature at its wildest. Floods are a force like hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, wildfire. We humans build our houses, pave roads, throw up restaurants, grocery stores and filling stations and often wild nature lets us have them for a time. But. Ask the residents of New Orleans after Katrina, of New York City after Sandy, the nearby residents of Waldo Canyon who saw the 2012 Waldo Canyon fire ravage their homes, the merchants in Manitou Springs who had two feet of mud in their basements, folks living in Moore, Oklahoma after the F-5 tornado did a Dorothy on their homes. Ask them whether human artifice seems so permanent.

    Now there is significantly more water up here in the mountains. It came over the last week in the form of rain and today, for those of us above 8,000 feet, as snow. The rain is already on its way to the Denver metroplex. The snow may, thankfully, delay some of the water by plugging up streams and releasing its own moisture gradually over the next days.

     

     


    Colorado Jefferson County Mountains Weather +Climate

  • Long ago native to this place

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                               Beltane Moon

    Up early today. Too early. 3:00 am. Sigh. Still, got blogging done, e-mails sent and my high intensity workout in before leaving for my first Native Plant Master class in Morrison’s Mt. Falcon Park.

    On the way I got gas at Conoco rather than the Loaf and Jug (Rumi, Omar?). I did that because I wanted a breakfast burrito from the best breakfast place in town according to reviews. But when I pulled up, the best breakfast place in town was gone. Not there. Vanished. Disoriented me for a bit, even though it was a food wagon. Not sure where it went, but I found it disconcerting to have an entire business, one I’d seen frequently since we moved here, disappear. Not to mention that I wanted breakfast and now no longer had time to stop elsewhere.

    The dewpoint/temperature convergence coupled with lots of moisture in the air gave the mountains long tendrils of fog slipping through the pines and white crowns like so many of my friends. Atypical. The effect is very schwarzwald. This could be Bavaria.

    In Morrison I turned off 285 North, which heads into Denver, and onto Colorado 8. It goes into Morrison, passing by the Fort, the adobe restaurant I mentioned some time back. Just a mile or two past the turnoff for Mt. Falcon Park where I was headed is the well known Red Rocks Amphitheater.

    These Coloradans are a hearty group. Every one came with a backpack, obviously used before, rain gear, hiking boots and some had water repellent, zippered pants over their regular pants. One young woman, recently moved here from North Carolina, had bananas, clementines and granola bars stuck in several mesh pockets.

    I say hearty because we each dutifully consulted our Colorado Flora field guide, our plant identification list and the Native Plant Master guide for Mt. Falcon Park (these last two distributed this morning as course material) in the constant and, at times hard, rain. It rained as we investigated a pretty five-petaled plant whose flowers change color after pollination. It rained while we investigated the shrub with trumpet shaped flowers that stood next to it. It poured down rain as we used Colorado Flora to narrow down the two species of cypress that stood next to each other.

    Further along the trail, yes, it rained, we found a vetch, one of two species of the pea family we looked at. Vetch takes up selenium from the soil and concentrates the mineral in its stalk and leaves. Horses and cows get the blind staggers from the selenium so, though a native, it’s an unwelcome plant in pastures. Plants that take up soil minerals and concentrate them in their stalk and leaves have created a new discipline, geo-botany. Geo-botany uses plant analysis to find places where toxic minerals are present in the soil.

    Did I mention it rained? All the time, from moderately hard to pelting. Not a usual Colorado problem. This is an anomalous May, though May is usually wet. So I’m told.

    We had a recently retired geologist in our class. We stopped among shrubs and short trees for a snack. He noted that was a geologically important spot. The Fountain formation, red sandstone and crumbly red shale, the same formation that makes up the Red Rock amphitheater,  gave way to the granitic rock of the true Rocky Mountains only 5 or 6 feet away. “This means we go,” Tom said, “from 250 million year old sandstone to billion year old rock.” To the east the sandstone, remnant of a much earlier mountain range, covers the same billion year old rock exposed during the Laramide orogeny, the mountain building episode that formed the Rockies.

    Since Kate had a pacemaker appointment, I had to leave early. I was not unhappy though I look forward to the next class. May it be dry. Of course, then it might be hot.

     

     

     


    Colorado Jefferson County Mountains Plants

  • Places are strange

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                            Beltane Moon

    The plane performed its wonder, lifting a couple of hundred people into the air. The full Beltane moon lit up the clouds passing by underneath. I stared out the window, a bit confused, leaving Minnesota to return home. This required an adjustment in my thinking.

    Then, when I arrived at my home airport, it was strange, another place on the road with unfamiliar paths and habits. Mostly I enjoy learning new things, but it was 10 pm, almost my bedtime and I stumbled a bit, as I would in an airport unknown to me. This experience conflicted with Kate waiting in the cell-phone lot, ready to pick me up and take me back to the mountains. Odd.

    Coming home to Colorado, the first time from away. The Woolly retreat for 2015 now over.

    It’s a cliche. Felt like I never left. But true. Slipping back into the physical presence of my friends, my Woolly brothers, was like putting on a comfortable shirt. It just fit. Coming as it did a couple of weeks after the start of the prostate path, it was especially welcome. One friend has had prostate surgery. Another knew many who had. Most of the news was positive. Cures, few side effects. Offers to talk further as the path winds on. So welcome.

    I suspect the level of my comfort at Camp du Nord, about a half-hour north and west of Ely, figured inversely to the level of strangeness I felt when returning to Colorado. But. I had no desire to remain in Minnesota, to reconsider our decision. I wanted to get home.

    More on the retreat later.


    Colorado Feelings Friends Jefferson County Minnesota Shadow Mountain Woolly Mammoths

  • Lucky We Live the Mountains

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                        Mountain Spring Moon

    Lucky we live the mountains. Yes, Minnesota is a beautiful state, but the exurban chunk of it in which we lived and the areas in which I usually traveled, south toward Minneapolis, only occasionally reflected the wonder of the northern part of the state. There was the Mississippi, the lakes in the city, the green belt of parks. There was little Round Lake on Round Lake Blvd. That was about it. The rest of it, the beautiful part, including northern Anoka County with its high water table, marshy and wooded terrain, had to be sought out by driving.

    Here the 3 mile drive home from highway 73 up Black Mountain Drive winds past a valley filled with grass and pine on the south side of which rises Conifer Mountain. To the north Shadow Mountain gradually pulls the road higher and higher, rocks jutting out, ponderosa and aspen dot the slopes and mule deer sometimes browse. Each morning when I go to the mailbox to retrieve the Denver Post Black Mountain is on my right, guarding the west and the eventual sunset.

    Anytime we leave home, whether to go into Evergreen for our business meeting or into Denver to see the grandkids or south toward Littleton for medical care mountains and valleys, canyons and gulches grace the roadways. Small mountain streams run next to the roadways, swift and right now, often violent. Walls of sheer rock alternate with wooded mountainsides. Always the journey is up or down until we get past the foothills onto the beginning of the great plains where the Denver metroplex takes over.

    This was my thought while driving home from the doctor yesterday. How short is a human life span. Not even a tick of the second hand to this rock. These mountains have been here for millions of years longer than the human species itself has existed. They will probably be here millions of years after we’re gone. What is one lifetime? What is a few years here or there? Compared to these. This was a comforting thought.


    Aging Beyond the Boundaries Faith and Spirituality Jefferson County Mountains Original Relation Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Third Phase